PROVIDENCE — Kristiana Warner didn't roll her eyes when her 6-year-old daughter asked her to test a children's make-up kit for cancer-causing substances.
That’s because Warner, 30, of Barrington, orders such tests for legal cases taken on by the law firm she works for. And she had ordered tests on some of her own cosmetics in the past.
But the result of the test on her daughter’s Aqua Glitter make-up kit, purchased at Providence Place for a ballet costume, was so alarming that Warner and her employer, the Deaton Law Firm, ordered additional tests on other Claire's make-up products sold elsewhere in the U.S.
By Friday, Claire’s, a global chain based in Illinois, had announced that it would stop selling the particular make-up products “in question,” as “a precautionary measure,” while it investigates.
The tests ordered by Warner’s firm, documented by a North Carolina testing company, and, first reported by WPRI-TV, showed tremolite asbestos in 17 make-up products, according to a report obtained by The Providence Journal.
In each of the 17 makeup products purchased, the analysis found the toxic material, according to Scientific Analytical Institute of Greensboro, North Carolina. Inhaling the asbestos fibers can lead to lung diseases, including cancer.
“All tested positive at alarming rates,” the company’s director of research, Sean Fitzgerald, wrote in his report.
The asbestos was in talc-based eye shadows, blushes and powders from kits with names such as Aqua Glitter, Pink Jeweled Heart, and Pink Jeweled Star, according to Fitzgerald’s findings.
In an interview, Fitzgerald said the amount of asbestos fibers he measured was “a clear hazard.”
He described the powder found in one make-up product this way: “What we have here is a loose powder that has millions of fibers that can be released into the air.”
"If you inhale it," said Fitzgerald, "it stays in your lungs pretty much for the rest of your life."
The products were purchased in nine different places around the country. One kit brought in for testing was manufactured in 2010, he said.
In a statement Friday, a spokeswoman for Claire’s, Marcia Horowitz, said that the safety of Claire’s customers is “of paramount importance.”
“We work closely with our vendors to ensure our products are tested and assessed in line with the relevant country regulations and guidelines,” says the statement, which says the company’s decision to pull certain items from store shelves is due to WPRI’s inquiry.
“Once we have more information and have the results of the investigation,” she said, “we will take the necessary action.”
As an operations manager at Deaton Law Firm, Warner has some experience working with cancer patients and some special resources, for testing products, that most parents don’t have. She says she was shocked to discover asbestos in makeup sold to her own daughter and brought into her own house.
“When your kid asks, 'Am I going to die?’,” says Warner, “it gets your attention.”